FamilySearch Wiki Historical Records is an ongoing project to describe the historical record collections published online. As new collections are prepared for publication, articles are written describing the overall collections and the records available in them. These articles include basic information about the collection, instructions on how to effectively search the records, and other potentially helpful material.

The User Guidance unit welcomes contributions to the FamilySearch Historical Records articles. Like all articles in the FamilySearch Wiki, these articles are not only meant to be used by patrons for research purposes, but are also available for patrons to contribute when they have a working knowledge of the locality or record type. Community members can help expand the research done by User Guidance by helping with image translations, record content description, related website listing, and other needed additions.

The tasks listed above involve adding information to wiki articles describing the corresponding FamilySearch Collection. There are multiple sub-tasks that involve adding content. These may be done independently of each other.

When available, sample images are added to the articles so that patrons may get a quick preview before browsing the entire collection. If the collection is not in English, the sample images need to be translated into English. Please see the document How to Help with Image Translations for further instructions.

This section includes sub-headers in bold text for the major record types found within the collection. A phrase similar to "[Record type] records may contain the following information" is generally included, followed by a bullet list of genealogically relevant information contained in the record type. Some collections contain several types of records and may need a list for each record type. For an example, see Spain, Diocese of Albacete, Catholic Church Records.

Explain to wiki users how the records can be used to help them find out more about their ancestors.

Describe research strategies that are helpful when dealing with the collection.

Explain what the next step would generally after they obtain information from the collection.

If the collection has an index, describe how to find indexed records in the collection. For an example see United States Census, 1940.

Related Websites and Wiki Articles:

Related website links: Links from the wiki article to related websites. Such links could include other websites hosting a similar collection, maps and history of the area, genealogy groups specifically dealing with the collection area, etc. Please avoid linking to paid websites, bibliographies, or Wikipedia.

Related Wiki articles: Links from the wiki article to other FamilySearch wiki articles. Such links could include the main locality/country landing page, wiki articles describing similar collections, and wiki articles with research helps for the locality.

These articles are written at a basic level for beginning users. The style guide explains how to create and edit content for the wiki articles. Please review the guide before contributing to the project. Any questions concerning the guide can be posted on the FamilySearch Collections Talk page.

A project box has been created for those participating in this project. The purpose of this box is to show your participation in the project as well as aggregate the names of all contributors into an easily searchable list. This box can be added to your profile page by using the "Insert/Edit Template" tool , switching to the "Manual" tab and selecting "Template:Userboxhistoricalproject" from the drop-down menu. (Without using the rich text editor, the box can be added by including "{{Userboxhistoricalproject}}" in the wiki code.)